If You Report A Stolen Phone To The NYPD, The Police Will Keep Your Phone Records Indefinitely

When a phone is reported stolen to the New York Police
Department, detectives routinely request phone records from the
day of the theft onwards, in case the suspect uses the phone to
make calls.

The requests, generally made as subpoenas without the
victim's consent or knowledge, last anywhere from four days to
two weeks, according to an NYPD officer who spoke with the
New York Times.

Sprint requires the police to have the
victim fill out a form first. Other carriers don't.

The subpoena adds your phone number and numbers called from that
phone to a database called the Enterprise Case Management
System. The system allows detectives to cross-reference that
number against phone numbers from other cases.

In the process, "the Police Department has
quietly amassed a trove of telephone logs, all obtained without a
court order, that could conceivably be used for any investigative
purpose," reports the
New York Times.

Sometimes the NYPD could even monitor calls made from a new
phone you use to replace the stolen one. The same
subpoena can also include calls made to and from your new phone
if the number has been transferred, detectives told the Times.

Detectives tell victims to hold off on transferring their number
so they have a better chance of tracking calls made by thieves.

“If large amounts of victim phone records are being
collected and added to a searchable database, it’s very
troubling,” said Michael Sussmann, a lawyer who represents
wireless carriers, interviewed by phone interview via the
New York Times.

The NYPD wouldn't comment on whether information obtained from
call records had been used for other cases.